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WSCR 670 iboc off again

T

Tom Wells

After a few more months of iboc, WSCR 670 once again has the HD off.
This morning on the way home from work at 7, and on the way into work at
7 tonight, they were in analog only. And both ways, I could listen to 650 WSM in daylight.
Audio sounds really nice on WSCR now, too. They don't have any splatter at all now.

Surely they can hear how better they sound without it.
Doesn't seem to be the same problem over at WBBM with the regrowth, fuzzies, etc.
Not that iboc isn't hurting their sound. Just that WSCR seems to more damaged in every way by the iboc.

Wish now I'd been keeping count how many times this has happened.
 
"It's just like the rollout of FM," Tom! Don't you remember how FM stations would pop on and off the air chronically, appearing and disappearing like flocks on starlings on your lawn? ::)

Neither do I...
 
Savage said:
"It's just like the rollout of FM," Tom! Don't you remember how FM stations would pop on and off the air chronically, appearing and disappearing like flocks on starlings on your lawn? ::)

Neither do I...
Click to expand...

Actually, I seem to recall many of them did.
 
As much as I hope it's permanent, I have a feeling that it is just temporary - again. That said, it's nice to have clean signals from 650, 660 and 680 back again!

And, speaking of "clean", last night the Chicago area was relatively free of the Russian jammer menace as WBBM had the screamer off as they carried Bears' football coverage. Though I listened happily to a rare event where the Bears dominated an opponent, I couldn't help but tune over to the now-clear adjacent channels as well. Nice to hear WABC again, without needing the most selective equipment to do so! WJR, was CLEAN on all of my radios and not just the ones with a bandwidth setting (or DSP). Whatever station I was getting at 790 (I was too lazy to ID it) was carrying national coverage of the SNF game. And, CKLW came in the way it used to do - in the clear.

Sometimes we forget just what an abomination the IBOC menace is on the MW band. It's truly appalling and we're reminded of that once the noise stops for a little while.
 
Yes, and isn't it hilarious to witness all the hand-wringing among Big Radio brain-trusters about the demise of AM? As if they didn't have anything to do with it....if the massive increase in noise from IBOC AM stations doesn't drive away enough audience, their lousy programming finishes the task.

You have to appreciate just HOW destructive the AM version of HD is. Only 75 stations are running the adjacent-jammer at night, and half of those are graveyarders with almost no significant night coverage. That means fewer than 40 AMs with wide general coverage are running HD - yet the interference spewed by this tiny handful of signals, about 0.8% of authorized US AM stations, is wreaking skywave havoc.

And they wonder why AM is having problems. Oh, I forgot: HD was going to "save" AM... ::)
 
Still off this morning and sounding good.
 
Their excuse is that they believe most of the population could care less about receiving distant stations via skywave at night. Which is probably true, but what about the times when you have a local next to a 50kw clear channel station that runs IBOC. I can hear noise from WBBM interfering wit my local WTNY on 790. I imagine the IBOC of WCBS doesn't play well with 870 WHCU, and how could I forget WBZ's jammer that blocks WYSL.

How is it legal to interfere with a station within its local service area? An 50kw CC running HD adds more noise to the AM dial than a Cuban jammer.
 
Pick out any FM running IBOC and listen to the first adjacent channels. Make a note of the pink noise you hear next to the assigned home channel. Do an A-B comparison with the white noise you encounter with any IBOC-free vacant channel. You'll hear the difference.
 
Savage said:
Pick out any FM running IBOC and listen to the first adjacent channels. Make a note of the pink noise you hear next to the assigned home channel. Do an A-B comparison with the white noise you encounter with any IBOC-free vacant channel. You'll hear the difference.
Click to expand...
It seems to be FM detector-type dependent. Old fashioned continuous tuned slope or ratio detectors hear a
buzz saw whine, PLL detectors don't seem to be "drifty" enough to hear the buzz in the same way.


Still clean on WSCR this morning.
 
I noticed that WFAN and CFTR were both coming in well. You'd think WFAN would want a clear signal further out and do what WSB, WJR, and WABC did when they recognized they were interfering with themselves. It's not just DXers who listen. The former I-A and I-B stations that use 1/2 wave antennas or more have fringe METRO GROUNDWAVE SERVICE while others fade. And the annulus of mimimal fading area is where WABC and WJR were beating each other up the worst, even during critical hours.
 
Schroedingers Cat said:
I noticed that WFAN and CFTR were both coming in well. You'd think WFAN would want a clear signal further out and do what WSB, WJR, and WABC did when they recognized they were interfering with themselves. It's not just DXers who listen. The former I-A and I-B stations that use 1/2 wave antennas or more have fringe METRO GROUNDWAVE SERVICE while others fade. And the annulus of mimimal fading area is where WABC and WJR were beating each other up the worst, even during critical hours.
Click to expand...

CBS might care only if WSCR was interfering with WFAN in the New York City market - say, a 60-mile radius of midtown Manhattan. Maybe. I hear they're not too concerned when WBZ interferes with KDKA in the outskirts of Pittsburgh (and maybe the other way around, inside the 128 in metro Boston?).
 
From my experience with interference in similar cases, WSCR would interfere with WFAN within 60 miles. Not 100% of the time, but a good portion of it. People may not realize where the noise is coming from, but just tune to a clearer signal.

Poor ground conductivity would exacerbate this situation. You have a nearby signal, weakened by Long Island or another area of bad conductivity, while the skywave of WSCR is unaffected by conductivity, giving a low desired to undesired signal ratio.
 
Some readers may be interested to know that WWJ Newsradio 950 in Detroit has been IBOC free for about 6 weeks now. It was discontinued shortly after the college football season began. I bring that up because WWJ is the new flagship for U-M football, and as we all know, IBOC inherently adds a time delay to live sports P-B-P.

This is by far the longest I've ever heard WWJ without IBOC since first implementing the technology several years ago. I cannot help but wonder if P-B-P considerations are the reason IBOC has ceased for the time being. A sizable number of old farts who attend Michigan football home games year after year like listening to the radio P-B-P on headphones.

Best of all, WWJ has lifted their 5 kHz brickwall filter! Audio sounds nearly as good as WJR now.
It will be interesting to see if IBOC returns once the current college football season ends.
 
MarkW said:
I cannot help but wonder if P-B-P considerations are the reason IBOC has ceased for the time being.
Click to expand...

Here in the Bay Area, our 95.7 FM (the Oakland A's flagship) started off the baseball season by leaving the HD on but eliminating the delay on the analog signal during the games. That lasted for about 2 months. Then they shut off the HD entirely during live games. They're sort of stuck between a rock & a hard place, I think. The standard response when they changed format (dropping country for sports) was "you can still hear the wolf on our HD-2".

Previously the A's games were on 106.9 FM, a CBS station. They didn't turn off the HD during live games, and since the radio was blaring in the concession areas and the restrooms, it was odd to hear the crowd go wild in the stands - followed 6 seconds later by "here's the pitch, and it's a high fly ball...etc."

Dave B.
 
BRNout said:
Whatever station I was getting at 790 (I was too lazy to ID it) was carrying national coverage of the SNF game. And, CKLW came in the way it used to do - in the clear.

Sometimes we forget just what an abomination the IBOC menace is on the MW band. It's truly appalling and we're reminded of that once the noise stops for a little while.
Click to expand...
The 790 station might have been WKRD from Louisville, KY.

Bring back AM Stereo!
 
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